For any of this to make any sense, I have to explain my current job
situation. I work for a company, Φ which hosts a website for Σ,
which is the site that is always getting slammed with SYN
floods. R, who runs Φ and usually fields calls from Σ is out of
town this week, so now I get to field calls from Σ.

Now, my entire weekend was punctuated with calls from Σ, usually at
ungodly morning hours when I'm still unconscience in bed. The upshot of the
recent SYN flood is
that the site in question, Σ.com was moved to a new
hosting facility in Canada, which, from talking to the owner of the company
α (I would have named this company, but I never did get a clear
audibly distinct name for this company other than it starting with an “ah”
type sound), is apparently right off several major backbones so they're able
to quickly respond to DDoS attacks more effectively than I by myself. Not that
it bothers me any, for as interesting as SYN floods are in
theory, in practice, they usually happen when I'm sleeping and there isn't
much I can do to if I can't get to the server.

So Saturday and Sunday were spent fielding calls and changing IP addresses for
Σ.com. First I was given the new IP address. Then it turns out to be the
wrong IP address, so change it.
Then a backhoe incident took out a fiber at α and the redunant
circuits weren't cutting in fast enough so yet another IP address change. There is also some
confusion on my part about who to actually talk to at Σ; I
have at least four contact names and it isn't clear to me what the
relationship between these four people are. So any change is followed by a
round of phone tag and catch-up.

Sigh.

The silliness didn't end this weekend though. I get a call at some
ungodly hour this morning from V, who works for Σ saying he couldn't
get to the site, and asking what the IP address for Σ.com
was.

First of all, Φ is no longer hosting Σ.com, so why
am I even getting this call. Second—

“Why don't you do an nslookup up of the IP address?” I
said to V.

“Okay,” said V, “tell me what to do. How do you do this
en-es-look-up?”

It was all I could do to keep from screaming. “What type of system are
you using?”

“What? I'm using a PC!”

“No, are you using a Mac, a Unix system—”

“No, I'm using a PC!”

“Or Windows?”

“Windows!”

Of course. I would have banged my head against the desk, but I was still
in bed, and banging my head against the matress just doesn't have the same
affect. Okay, quickly, what's the easiest way to find out the
IP address of a website under
Windows? “Okay,” I said. “Can you bring up the DOS command line?” Pleeeeeeeeease be able to do
this. Pleeeeeeeeease. I figure at worst, I can smother myself with the
pillows.

“Yes,” said V.

“Okay, type P-I-N-G space, then Σ.com,” I said.

“Okay,” said V. “But it doesn't respond! That's the problem!”

“Right, I know that,” I said. “But what does it say the
IP address is?” V rattles off
the IP address. “Yes, that's
the IP address I was last
given. That's the correct IP
address.”

“But can you do anything? The site doesn't come up!”

“You'll have to call the Canadian data center,” I said, not at all
remembering the name.

“But why?”

“Because Φ is not longer hosting the site, and I don't have
access to the servers in Canada.” Doesn't Σ tell its employees
anything? This is one of my contacts for the website?

“Oh, so I should call α then?”

Brillant deduction.

It's about 3:30pm and I'm leaving for the grocery story when I think L
from Σ calls. Or it may be T from Σ. It's one of the four
contacts I've talked to, and it isn't V. I have to change the IP address yet again because of
problems with α. I haven't actually left yet, and it takes only a
minute to do. Not a problem. Then I rush out the door to the grocery
store.

I looked outside to the court yard. “There's more than three it looks
like.”

“What?”

“Outside. In the court yard.”

“Oh, those. Those are boxes the Kids found; I'm not sure what they're
there for.”

“Um … okay,” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“The ones over there,” she said, pointing to the dining room. “The ones
filled with books.”

“Oh.”

Spring found a
lot of books, three boxes worth of books. And an interesting collection
too. In one box are books mostly dealing with history, generally European
from 1500 onwards, with a specific viewpoint of Victorian England. The
second box contains books about writing, with specific books on romance and
mystery writing. The last box contains books about movie making, mostly the
business side and script writing.

From looking at these books, and assuming they all come from the same
person, one would think that the person was attempting to produce a movie
about a romantic mystery set in Victorian England. Perhaps a movie version
of Saucy Jack?

The best of the lot though, has to be the Romance
Writers' Phrase Book, a collection of over 3,000 “descriptive tags” to
use in your romance novel. Stock phrases you can use to describe her
body:

she was slender, dark, and fiery with eyes that glowed and
pierced

a slim waist which flared into agilely rounded hips

her hose felt like sheaths of clammy cloth on her exceptionally
pretty legs

Or a discription of him:

his well-groomed appearance was incongruous with his suntanned
skin

he had an air of authority and the appearance of one who demanded
instant obedience

In June 2003, Bill Moyers said that “Karl Rove has modeled the
Bush presidency on that of William Mckinley (1897-1901) and modeled
himself on Mark Hanna, the man who virtually manufactured McKinley.
Mark Hanna saw to it that Washington was ruled by business,
railroads, and public utility corporations.” President Bush's tax
cuts have given over 93% of their benefits to large corporations and
well-to-do households with over 250,000 dollars of annual income
(about 10% of the U.S. households). Moreover, President Bush's tax
cuts are abolishing taxes on such asset-based income as stock
dividends and capital gains.

Our antivirus software has detected a large ammount of viruses
outgoing from your email account, you may use our free anti-virus
tool to clean up your computer software.

For further details see the attach.

For security reasons attached file is password protected. The
password is “36847”.

Kind regards,
The Conman.org team http://www.conman.org

Yea, like any virus has escaped from this email account. Quite
possibly forged email, but none directly from me. Never mind the
fact that the email client I use doesn't support attachments, I don't use
Windows to check my email—I use Unix (okay, technically Linux). And
running Windows executables just isn't possible (well, it is
possible but it isn't easy to do, thankfully).

But what gets me is that this is supposedly from
support@conman.org, which doesn't exist here
at Conman Laboratories.
And even if it did, it would either be myself or Mark doing the support role. I don't
send attachments, and if Mark did, I suspect it wouldn't be in
zip format (we're both more tar.gz users than
zip users). And Mark would never send a password in
email.

Oh, and we don't run anti-viral software on the server—it's just not an
issue here.

Sigh.

Update later today

This is an identical message that we were getting at work. It is
spam/trojan virus. It uses your domain name. Very clever too.
Variations of it use different wording and spacing, making filtering
difficult. Also, the .zip file contains a trojan .exe
and is uaually “Readme.zip” or
“TextFile.zip” and is password protected. Why? No virus
scanner can take a peek inside and quarrantine it.

I give these bozos points for this one. Looks like they have been
saving up many ideas for one blow.

Too bad they pissed me off—it hit us at about 11:20am. I
had a 12:00 lunch appointment. I ended up being 15 minutes late to
this lunch appointment after tracing the source to somewhere in
Houston, TX and setting up
sufficient blocks to keep it out. It's a good thing they assigned
the email filter system to the UNIX group (of which I am currently
the ONLY member of) (simply because it runs on a Linux black
box—completely contained, but Linux backend)—that way I
was the “Jr. Admin” who blocked the trouble in less than
an hour. PFffft!

Turns out one Thorkild Grosboel, pastor of Taarbaek, a town of
51,000 just north of Copenhagen, said in a recent interview that
“there is no heavenly God, there is no eternal life, there is no
resurrection.” According to the Times, this “mystified” church
leaders, and Grosboels bishop responded by suspending him.

For a week.

Thats right. A Lutheran pastor announced a personal theology that
denied the existence of God, resurrection, and eternal life and the
response of the church was a one-week suspension.

Wow. Talk about turning the other cheek. Thats some serious
tolerance of dissent. If Pope Leo X had been that forgiving toward
Martin Luther, we wouldnt have Lutherans.

Nietzche saying God was dead is one thing. But for a Lutheran
minister? And not be kicked out or otherwise excommunicated?

The Onion should
give up satire and just report the news. Next think you know, there'll be
Christian
porn and … oh … um … darn!

But the “Christian” whoremongers have taken it to a step
beyond, way beyond the empty promises of the fallen-angel wannabes
whom they parade across our TV
screens on the “Christian” channels. And by that I mean the
God-fearin' faction that has moved into the lucrative business of
making pornographic films and carved out a whole new genre:
Christian porn.

Obligatory Miscellaneous

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ahead, I won't bite. I promise.

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